Managing Crisis and How to Communicate It

Sometimes, your company or organization might face crisis that can decrease your reputation in public’s eyes. When the hardship comes, you will want to manage the matter right so that you will not lose your customers, clients and reputation.

When you face crisis and there are issues to solve, it’s always important to know what you’re going to do about it and let people know that you’re doing something to solve it. Crisis management and communication are significant to help you get back stronger. Based on my experiences, here are some steps that could help.

Identify the Crisis Details First

Before going further to solution, you must be sure first about what you are facing. Gather the right information (including how public think about the issue) and the right team to handle the crisis, as you don’t want to manage it wrongly. After you get full details about it, discuss it well with your team so you can make the right decision for the crisis management.

Share with Your Entire Company or Organization

Your entire company or organization must know about what’s happening. You don’t want to keep them in the dark as no matter they’re maybe not part of your crisis team or your communication team, they are still part of your company and organization too. Therefore, let them know about what’s going on.

Plan Communication with External Parties

You must plan how to inform the public, including your customers and stakeholders. In this way, people know that your company or organization is honest and sincere with them, especially your customers. Prepare the right communication team to inform the external parties.

Remember to assign the effective spokesperson to manage the public relation to both new media, internet, (as we’re now living in digital era) and old media like TV and newspapers. I believe the keys are transparency and effective solution you can provide to regain public trust.

Review the Results of Crisis Management

After the crisis has passed, always review the matter from the beginning to the end, whether the results are positive or negative. By making reviews with your crisis management and communication team, you will know if you can still do it the same way in the future or you need to find other solutions, in case there is any future crisis.

Provide Follow-up to Public

In addition, one more step, after the crisis period has passed, never forget to update the public about the progresses. People want follow-up from you after and not only about what you were doing during the crisis. By providing post-crisis follow-up, you show people that you’re actually a part of them. They will respect your transparency.

Just keep in mind that no matter how big and successful you are, sometimes you could face unexpected things. Handling the matter in the right, honest and sincere way is the thing that public will appreciate from you.